This ultra-thin lens could slim your smartphone and camera

A team of engineers at the University of Utah have developed a new method of creating optics which are flat, but are still able to bend light to a single point like traditional lenses. This breakthrough could allow some cameras to use paper-thin lenses in the near future.

The super-achromatic lens is 10 times thinner than the width of a human hair. Photo source: University of Utah.

Led by professor Rajesh Menon of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the research challenges the view that flat, diffractive lenses cannot be corrected for all colors simultaneously. Usually diffractive lenses bend various wavelengths differently, which leads to large chromatic aberrations.

What the engineers have created is a super-achromatic lens that’s 10 times thinner than the width of a human hair, and it uses a microstructure-geometry to bring multiple wavelengths to the same focus. Future lenses designed with this method could replace the traditional larger and curved lenses we’re used to seeing on cameras.

According to Menon, the team’s algorithm is able to design a microstructure-geometry that’s able to bring different colors, or wavelengths, to the same focus. The way in which the lenses can be produced, being made from any transparent material such as glass or plastic, gives them an advantage over other flat lens approaches such as meta-lenses, which are difficult to manufacture. By fabricating these lenses using optical lithography, the devices are easy to manufacture at a low cost via the same technologies used to make CDs or DVDs.

The team admitted that further work is needed before the new lenses can deliver the image quality needed to replace conventional lenses, and believe that within the next five years, they can be used in simple commercial applications. Currently the researchers are focused on applications in smartphone cameras, cameras that can be mounted to drones, and medical devices.

The research has been published in the journal, Scientific Reports.